deary days

small town parades are the best.  they practically drive up to you, stop, and then dump out a bucket of candy.

and that is just what my mother has in her mouth.  i would be nice and not include any pictures of her with her lip full of chaw, but unfortunately, she was so occupied in all of them.

red, aren’t they?

i could be mistaken, but it looks like either one of them is going to spit on the pavement any second.

but that really wasn’t the point of this post.  here are the darling children with their cousins living large at grandma’s.

that’s the life.

and here i am taking daddy boy in hand.  me yammering, him failing to look concerned.  repeat.

the children were commandeered again by the other grandparents last weekend.  boy and i were sitting across from each other at the empty dinner table when i asked in mock desperation, “what would do if we didn’t have kids?  would we still like each other?  do we even have anything in common?!”  to which he replied indifferently, “nothing but jesus.”  now that’s the good stuff.

i stopped and chatted up this grandma.  she even let me take pictures.  i have to say, she strikes me as the kind of woman who never bothered with saying “when.”  just my type.

on our way to the library fundraiser.

natalie posing with a personal favorite.  please note the less obvious volume in her other hand.

the otto boys wasting no time.

and here i am working on my pile.

in other news, this blog is finished!  clean out of space.  i think i can throw up more text, but otherwise i had better get to work on the new digs and come up with a camera.  perhaps i’ll see you around.  *m

love

nothing says “love” like early morning endearments written on a scrap of simplot notepaper, concluding with the ultimatum to return my latest shopping purchase.

righteous

a little christmas love from the ottos, if you didn’t get yours already.

boy’s sister made these for me.  and she will probably never make anything for me again.  my husband already regrets agreeing to model for me.  i’m sure you can see it in his eyes, but he never liked the idea in the first place.  still, it was fun.  megan said one of the dudes in the cubicle behind her at work eventually came up and asked, “i don’t mean to pry into your personal life…but what the hell are you doing?”  😉

i’m sorry, but i think i’m going to be sick now

my husband doesn’t bring me flowers.  he brings me specimens.  the other day he brought me a pale green and coral seed pod from a magnolia tree.  now, while i’d rather have roses, i still appreciate the sentiment and set it nicely on the piano.  he loves me.  then i turn around today and it’s a positive pustule eruption of seeds and other demonstrations of frantic and erstwhile adolescence.

seriously, i want to vomit every time i see it.  gah.

yeah baby

we took these pictures on our 10 year anniversary, just behind the corner in june.  i thought baby number 5 merited a photo shoot in a trailer park.  there’s no place like home.

of course, it helps when you have a friend who is a photographer and willingly agrees to meet you after hours at trailer parks in garden city.

this particular toaster strudel is due halloween.

i couldn’t decide if i should post this picture.  all i could think was, “does this dress make my butt look big?”  to which my husband said, “honey, you all look big.”

well, here i am laughing after the photographer told marc to suck it in and he totally fell for it.  hooray for skinny jokes.

i love my man.

and this lower photo is the one i am framing.  since it’s pink i could hang it in my dining room.  or could i?  it’s these delicate questions of propriety that i have little (no) bearing on.

for instance, it’s time to roll.  the neighbors are getting suspicious.

thanks amy jo!  p.s.  i look forward to seeing you in this dress next.  😉

10 years today

i know, it’s disgusting.

but i am very happy to be married to my red haired boy.  they just don’t make them like that anymore.  he doesn’t have a facebook, or even worse, a pinterest.  he’s modest beyond any account.  considerate to a fault.  quiet, but discerning.  in fact, he’s crazy smart.  not to mention faithful, humble, and hard working.  he takes a beating without complaining.  and even better?  he doesn’t have “feelings.”  (if i ever had to listen to a man talk about his feelings, i’d vomit right there.)  he has excellent taste in all things, but doesn’t feel the need to parade it or go shopping (unless it’s for a hoe).  he lays his life down every day and loves like christ loves.  there are no parts of him that have been wooed or bought by any industry or any fad.  he’s rock solid with zero fluff.  and you will never see him in “distressed” denim.

all man, and he’s all mine. ♥

now those are some chops

dude.  and some people have the nerve to tell me that they don’t find my husband “attractive.”

well we don’t have time for that sort of nonsense.  other than my husband’s sideburns, what i would like you to note is my quintessentially fabulous dress.  that is why we were having this photo shoot in the first place.  i have never been able to wear the dress since it is technically too small.  don’t eat.  don’t cough.  don’t move.  it kind of limits your options.

so this was my 31st birthday present to myself and my trusty ingenuity.  he had to unzip me to get me back in the car.

but at least now i have evidence.

 

it fits.

a friend at church took them for us because she’s nice like that.  although she did think we were a bit strange.  “what’s with you two?  you don’t like to smile, you don’t like to have fun, you don’t like to show affection…”  face it, some people are cold hearted and soulless like that….

which reminds me, i think three of our children tried to drown in the koi pond during the photoshoot.  fortunately the bigger one jumped in after the the littler one, even though he can’t swim either.

the real sad thing is that gold rhinestones on my shoes don’t show up.  i know, it breaks my heart too.  but they do sparkle in real life.  the necklace is boy’s grandmother’s.  and the dress…i actually have no idea where it came from.  other than my closet.

anyways, this summer marks our 10 year anniversary.  we’re what you call made for each other.  that or we deserve each other, i’m not sure which would be more correct.

but he does grow some mean facial hair and make some cute babies.

hot

that’s daddy for you.

we made a trip north after christmas so marc could help on a job my brother was doing.  we like to joke that boy made the cover of the newspaper because he’s so stinkin’ sexy while reuben likes to climb in a unitard (not on the cover of the newspaper).  seriously.

that and boob skipped over to q-doba for lunch, barefoot, decidedly dirty, and then wondered why he got frisked by mall security.  my favorite was when jehu’s little cousin saw an elderly/bald/slightly homeless man while shopping and yelled, “it’s uncle reuben!”  what was even more uncanny was when two days later jehu himself spotted a quadriplegic in an electric wheelchair and mistook him for reuben on a moped.  let’s just say we have a lot of material to work with here and we do so quite often. i ♥ my little brother.

the best part about fall

hot chocolate waiting for daddy when he got home from work.

“don’t you feel special with your new mug i got you?” i asked.  (super fun yard sale find.  it’s even daddy-sized.)  but he only replied, “you mean, don’t i feel gay holding this pink cup?”  hey, that cup is sweet.

my true love

leaves tomorrow morning for brasil for two weeks and today marks our 9 year anniversary.  i am quite sure i couldn’t live without him.

he remains undecided.